Crazy purple pixels cant tell if hardware or software.

just out of nowhere pixels on my screen turn purple. when im watching somthing with video you can really see how the pixels bounce around (lines, blurryness). i archived and installed, same issue. it just seems to turn whole shapes purple somtimes. Like when i start up the apple logo is purple....
should i try erase and install?
i think its the video card. there is no damage to the LCD at all.
if i take a screenshot and veiw the screenshot on another computer and it looks the same, that means it is somthing internal and not the actual lcd right?
im really worried, never had any troubles with my baby before.

Theo, Welcome to the discussion area!
Boot from the Apple Hardware Test disc and see what the test results are.

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Macbook pro freezes with purple pixels

My macbook doesn't want to boot up. I just get the apple with the rotating wheel that goes on for about 60 seconds. Then it either freezes or magically goes to the desktop. If it does get past the freezing spin wheel to the desktop, I have only a matter of time before these crazy purple pixels just flood about a nice portion of the screen. Once I see the random purple pixels there is nothing I can do to get rid of it, It just freezes and I have to shut it down with the power button. I got the computer in 2008 so I don't know if it's dying from old age or maybe it's a virus. It's really frustrating.

There aren't any Mac viruses.
Run the Apple Hardware Test
Intel-based Macs: Using Apple Hardware Test

Macbook Pro freezes at the boot up screen. Purple Pixels occur if I get through the boot up and freezes

My macbook doesn't want to boot up. I just get the apple with the rotating wheel that goes on for about 60 seconds. Then it either freezes or magically goes to the desktop. If it does get past the freezing spin wheel to the desktop, I have only a matter of time before these crazy purple pixels just flood about a nice portion of the screen. Once I see the random purple pixels there is nothing I can do to get rid of it, It just freezes and I have to shut it down with the power button. I got the computer in 2008 so I don't know if it's dying from old age or maybe it's a virus. Also, one time, I saw the flashing globe. It's really frustrating.

Powerbooks are not MacBooks and MacBook are not MacBook Pros. Look under the screen, what you have there is the machine you actually have. See if one of these programs applies:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2377
http://www.apple.com/support/macbook-bottomcase/
Run the hardware test here otherwise:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303081

IMac 2010 11,3 Green/Purple Pixels

Hi Guys,
Been browsing the internet for ages, including the apple forums, and always come across similar issues, but never seem to fit mine 100%.
I've got a 27" iMac 2010 11,3 i5.
Basically, about a year or so ago, it started to get these slight green and purple pixels on the screen, more square artifacts than anything else, but it was no problem, because if i'd 'select' them with the cursor, they'd go, as time progressed they've gotten worse and worse, to the point where they would take over the whole screen, again, a simple 'select' all of the screen would remove them for a short while, they never appeared doing anything specfic, but would be guarenteed to turn up.
The system now is only really usuable during Safe Boot, Under normal boot conditions, it will last between 15 seconds and an hour tops, Until it just hangs, the entire GUI is locked, however the Cursor will move, I've left it for a while to see if it will reclaim itself, but to no avail, the only option is to hold down the power until it shuts down.
Now, this only started happening after upgrading to Lion, I've since moved to Mountain Lion, and it still persists, So i decided to do an Apple Hardware Test in Extended mode, I received an error regarding the HDD, which was a 1TB Western Digital Drive, Don't get me wrong, it was slow, but it never seemed to give me issues, so I replaced the hard drive (No Apple care & out of Warranty), with a 2TB Seagate Model, Installed Mountain Lion, instant issues, Straight after succesful install.
I've since done several other Hardware Tests, and the only issue i get is the Hard Drive Sensor, Which I understand because of the 3rd Party hard drive.
So, within the last 3-4 weeks i've reinstalled, Re formatted, Zero'd the hard drive around 15 times, just to see if anything changed.
With Regards to the Safe Mode Boot, Its perfect, never get artifacts, never get a hang, nothing! Same goes for anything other than Normal Boot Conditions.
These pixels can be screenshot and still remain there! They also appear over Screen Sharing.
The system was bought for Graphic Design use, and thats what its needed for, But with it getting to the point of me only being able to work under safe mode, I've run out of options!
From what I know, someting under normal boot conditions is causing the issue, a kext maybe, but I've no idea on which one is causing the issue.
Even if i can get it working with something disabled/removed it's fine, But Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign are my work, and without being able to use them i'm pretty much limited!
I've obviously tried resetting the SMC/PRAM again, no changes, I've changed the RAM, bought new, swapped out, Nothing no changes.
The system is currently running 10.8.3.
One thing i did notice, is that the system often lasts longer before it hangs under the 64 Bit Kernel, rather than the 32 Bit Kernel (Not sure if thats expected or not but thought it would be worth a mention)
Thanks for all and any advice given in advance!
Ethan.

Hey,
Sorry for a delay in reply!
Well no, i never solved it, I've since stripped the machine and tried to see whats going on, and everything seems perfect.
A company has suggested its the graphics chip, and has offered to re-ball it, but i'm not sure on that yet.
But to add injurt to insult, hald of my display is now flickering every half hour or so.
I think i'm at a loss with it.
Only thing its being used for now is a Target Display Mode for a Mac Mini, which ironically works perfectly, and the hard drive is set up as a shared drive, So it's just a really expensive screen!
Ethan.

Hardware or software issue causing purple lines & no boot...

I was watching a movie on my Mac Pro (2006) and suddenly the video stopped and purple lines went all over parts of the screen. I couldn't do anything, not even a force quit, I was forced to turn off the power.
Upon restart, the Apple logo is showing the same purple lines, though the grey background was unaffected. After the loading, the logo disappears and then I get a cursor and a beachball and nothing else. Mouse input works, but otherwise the computer does nothing.
I was able to do a safe boot and it works, but the purple lines still remain.
Anyone else have this issue? Does it sound like hardware or software?
I'm probably gonna transfer files and just reinstall snow leopard. I'm hoping it's not a dead video card or something. If that's the case, then it's just become a craigslist special... maybe $250?lol
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WHat

Actually, I have a Late 2011 Macbook Pro Quad Core Sandy Bridge that's mostly been sitting in my safe since I bought it in 2011 (insurance replacement form a Core 2 Duo era Macbook Pro that was stolen).
That thing has always run circles around the Mac Pro. It may run at a slower clock speed, but everything about the Sandy Bridge Core i7 is superior to the now severely obsolete Woodcrest Xeons
It's definitely served me well, it was my first Intel Mac, I moved from a Powerbook G4 1.5ghz to this, and it was amazingly fast, even running Adobe CS2 in Rosetta. But lately, for me it's been getting slower and slower. Any websites with flash are slow as molasses. I can't even make it through an episode of a show on the History or A&E websites without the last segment being a slideshow.
I've recently switched to the Chrome browser, it's helped in usability, but it's still not ideal.
I'll wait for a good deal on a 7300GT on eBay to get it back up and running. Still, I really like iCloud and all the integration that comes with the latest Mac OS releases, so it really is time for me to start using my modern Macs more. I was already heading in this direction. It's been a good system, but it's time has passed. I'm already moving my iTunes HD to my Macbook Pro, next I gotta get the files off of the Mac Pro onto an external.
Maybe I'll just keep it around as a Rosetta system since that's the one area where my Macbook Pro falls short. I still use PPC apps once in awhile.lol

I was registing an Applecare agreement ,but i cant find the hardware product serial numble. where can i find it ?thx!

Hi,
I was registing an Applecare agreement ,but i cant find the hardware product serial numble. where can i find it ?
THX!

It's almost certainly on the box the machine came in.
Also you can use System Profiler (in Utilities, also can access through "More info" in the "About this mac" window -- click on the "apple" in top left corner). In the Profiler click Hardware on the left and look at the info in the right panel ("Serial Number (system)").

Does anyone know how to fix purple pixels on the back camera?

I Was outside running around playing lacrosse and had my phone in my waist band with the back of the phone up against my skin. After running around and getting sweaty I grabbed my phone and there was condensation on the inside of the camera. And now when I try to take pictures it looks like all the pixels are sort of like a purple like the pic above. You can see through it but the purple pixels really disrupt the picture. Has anyone ever had anything like this happen. If so how'd you fix it?

Hello ChrisBaeza21,
Sorry to hear about the camera on your iPhone not working properly. There probably is not a way for you to fix it yourself, but it would be a good idea to have it looked at by Apple, as it may need to be repaired. Because it got wet you may be looking at a repair that you may have to pay for because any liquid exposure is something that is not covered by the limited warranty. If you have AppleCare+, then cost would not be as much. Take a look at the articles below to go over those options to have your iPhone looked at.
iPhone Repair - Other Repairs
http://www.apple.com/support/iphone/repair/other/
Liquid damage to iPhone or iPod isn't covered by warranty
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204104
Regards,
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Blue/Purple pixelated apple logo followed by a white screen?

After a system update I was checking some e-mail when my screen turned white. Restarted via holding the powerbutton down for 10 seconds and when it restarted the Blue/Purple Pixelated logo loaded up then the screen flickers black followed by a white screen. I have read over the forums about the matter but many of the white screens of death were of a different manner. Im in a bit of a panic due to some deadlines has anyone else had this issue.

You can try SMC and PRAM resets:
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3964
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1379
If no change, take your MBP to an Apple store genius bar and have the technicians perform a free diagnosis to determine what the issue(s) may be.
Ciao.

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*little green and purple pixel dots on my imac27 screen._ The dots are not permanent on to a specific place they change randomly and ive got them on my screen 1-2 times per day 1-2 hours each time (not all the time).Does anyone knows whats happening?

Hi-
Have you applied both iMac 27" firmware fixes?
First, do this...
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL984
and then this...
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL998

BB Z10 Gone completely black. No LED lights when connected to charger.HOW TO KNOW ITS A HARDWARE OR SOFTWARE FAILURE?

My bb Z10 just went completely blacked while i was using it this afternoon. It had above 70%charge while i was using it. i removed the battery and checked again a number of times. I even tried with another z10 battery properly working and found that its not a problem with my battery since the phone worked well with my battery in the other device.
Since i bought the phone from another country and cant get the service here in India (the phone is still in the warranty period) I m confused what to do.
It would be really useful if I could figure out whether its software or hardware failure. If its a hardware prob, i should ship the device for warranty time benefits of service.But it it where a software prob, i could find out someway to solve this somehow here in India.
HOW TO KNOW ITS A HARDWARE OR SOFTWARE FAILURE?

try this,
connect the device to BlackBerry link.by connecting it the conputer using USB cable(you can use your USB charger here)
then while the device is still connected to the computer do not remove the USB but remove the battery.
if BlackBerry link will be able to detect the device you can perform a back up(to keep the data of the device) then update the device. you need internet connection.
this should fix the issue if the problem is with the software
let me know what happens
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2. If your issue has been solved, please resolve it by marking the post "Solution?" which solved it for you!

Keyboard problems: hardware or software?

The keyboard on my iBook G4 has dead keys, not all in a row but grouped on the right side of the keyboard (they include the enter key, 'l', the comma, and three or four others). There's no obvious damage to the keyboard (I've lifted the keyboard out and inspected the connector, and nothing looks cracked or broken).
Is there any means to tell if this is a hardware v. software problem? I can use my logitech keyboard and mouse with the iBook (in fact, I'm doing that now). I've restarted, repaired permissions, zapped the PRAM and run other maintenance scripts with no success.
Thanks!

I don't have a firewire external hard drive or a bootable backup (I do have a Time Machine backup to a USB hard drive, but I don't see that I can boot from that external drive). I did boot from the OS10.5 disk, but of course there's nothing (so far as I can see) that allows me, once booted, to test the keyboard -- i.e., no text edit.
I can use my external (logitech) keyboard just fine, and nothing else seems to be wrong with the computer, so I'm leaning toward replacing the keyboard (I'm not against that anyway, just on the grounds of preventative maintenance). So, a related question: what's the best way to be sure that I buy the right replacement keyboard for my 1.42 GHz G4? Is the part number on the keyboard itself, or available through System Profile (I could not find it there). As always, thanks!

Hardware or software?

I'd appreciate some views about whether my totally flaky PowerBook is suffering from hardware or software problems, if it's possible to tell.
The computer goes bad in various ways but most frequently some application will stop responding, and soon after that nothing can be saved, error messages appear about disk problems or shared library problems, and so on. Restarting would usually restore everything for a while, but it's been getting worse. This trouble started after I had a new (Apple) hard drive installed, but the place that installed it has twice checked the drive and all my hardware, and all tests were passed.
When the trouble grew constant, I wiped my drive clean, installed a new system, dragged in the contents of folders from a backup, and things were better for a while and then got just as bad and even worse.
What I did next makes me think that it's a hardware problem, like perhaps the new drive or RAM (both under warranty), and I'd like to know whether this makes sense:
My backup is on an external HD, created with Carbon Copy Cloner. I can boot from that backup and everything functions normally-- I don't think I've ever had a problem when booted from the external system. But recently I (again)reformatted my laptop's drive and used CCC to clone from the external to the internal drive, and the resulting system would start up and immediately be frozen. Does it follow from this that either my cloning was imperfect or there is a hardware problem on my laptop?
(I then reformatted the drive again, installed a fresh system and used Migration Assistant, or whatever it's called, to pull in the contents of my backup, and it worked for about a week and then got even flakier than ever. Won't boot up at all anymore. The bootable backup still seems fine, though.)
The place that replaced my HD say the computer is old, just get a new one. But if it's just the drive, or just the RAM...

After about a day and a half with the new hard drive installed, I have yet to see any evidence of my recurring problems. I spent the first evening using only a newly installed system on the new drive (worked fine), then yesterday morning I cloned everything back from my external "backup". So it's been a day of apparent full functioning. Considering that in its last stages, my computer wasn't able to even open Safari, this does point to a bad hard drive. The only other possibility, I suppose, could be some sort of loose connection that had gotten progressively worse, which could have jiggled back into place during the drive swap, in which case it might show itself again gradually as it did before (the problems started a few weeks after the HD was installed). At any rate, I seem to have a working computer at the moment, which is only to the good.
After another day or so I am going to try to open Eudora. This was what seemed to trigger all of my earlier problems (they first began shortly after I made a change in Eudora Preferences, and the HD installers assured me that the problem was not in their new drive and that my "Eudora was toast." After that, it did seem that every time I used Eudora, problems would arise (rebooting seemed to make them okay temporarily) and so I have not used my POP3 email for months, and have about a thousand emails up on the server that will download into Eudora In as soon as I dare to try this.
The guy who installed (in May) the almost-surely-bad HD said that if my experiment proved the drive was bad, I would probably be out of luck because the warranty on that drive had run out, which is a laugh because I came back with a complaint, for the first of about four times, only three weeks after it had been put in. But I don't know if it's worthwhile pursuing justice (assuming my new new drive continues to work). As I said, I do not need another 80GB drive, and don't think I ever will. Should I try to demand a refund for that drive and the labor costs of installing it and transfering data?
Message was edited by: Paul-ny

Hardware or Software Problem?

Hi
Every six weeks or so, my IMAC G5 slows down until it doesn't respond (pinwheels galore).
Ultimately I run disk utility from the Leopard Disk, but verify disk and repair disk both fail. So I erase the hard drive and re-install. Everything is then great for about six weeks until I start waiting for godot again...
How can I tell if this is a hardware or software issue? I'm sick of doing this, so if the solution is hardware I'd be willing to get new hardware. I don't want to get new hardware, and then have the same problem when I transfer of the data.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Rob
Message was edited by: RKS1971

How much free space do you have on your hard drive? Do you allow the computer to perform its regular maintenance tasks? You can use OnyX to clear your caches, and how much RAM do you have? Increasing that might speed things up as well. Make sure your trash is emptied as well.
These are a few things you can do to speed your machine up, you can also clear out deadwood, run [whatsize|http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/44018] to see if anything you don't use is taking up lots of space.

Windows xp pro stalls - blank screen- hardware or software problem?

Hi Guys,
My system is about one month old and has been awesome in performance and graphics.
Suddenly it (windows xp pro) stalls after flashing the windows loading screen and it goes blank. Looks like a software problem?
I am posting on this forum because when I check cmos, no hard drives are registered.
I can't get into safe mode, can't get past the administrator/user screen because no mouse operates here and can't select icons with the keyboard.(No admin passwords were set up anyway)
Booting from CD, repair console doesn't work because it can't find any hard drive.
Reluctant to do a complete reinstall because of precious stuff on the hard drive.
Using f8, "last known good..." just gives the same blank screen.
Using floppy boot, no other drives are recognized.
If my root directory has been wiped out by a virus or something, how come it gets past post and starts to load windows? If it's merely the graphics driver or similar not loading, how come the cmos shows no hard drive?
Is this a hardware or software problem? Any help much appreciated.

THE ANSWER !!
Hi Guys,
I finally got to talk to the guy who set up this system and he said that it is normal for RAID drives not to show on BIOS/CMOS. 'Think of it like a vrtual drive' he said. When the black and white initialization screen shows something like: 'Nividia Stripe-healthy'...then THAT is the hard-drive.
He said that as long as Windows was getting to the loading screen, that means that the computer itself was functioning okay, so don't worry about BIOS, the problem is a file corruption in windows, or virus etc.
Also he said that when trying to use recovery console or reinstall windows, because the system can only read the RAID drives through a SCSI interface, you have to load the Nvidia SCSI drivers from floppy by pressing f6 when asked to at the bottom of the pale blue screen (from Windows cd boot), before trying to do anything with windows (or windows will just tell you it can't read the drives, as it did before with me.)
So in the end, I reinstalled windows by that method and everyting seems fine so far. YAY!
Thanks you people for being kind enough to help someone out. I really appreciate it.

Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause.

I'm using HP dv6 7043 cl. My system was really slow. It was taking almost 7 mins in startup. I tried to reboot but I think I chose the wrong option while doing it. I pressed F9 button. It asked me to choose DVD-R or usb. I chose dvd option as my recovery was made on discs. Later it gave me the hp recovery menu options. There, I chose system recovery. It did it successfully but now the windows is not starting. It says Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. Can someone please help and tell me how can I solve this issue and again get back my original windows?

Hi,
Assuming this may just a problem with the recovery media/process, here's an alternative option you could try.
Before trying the following, make sure you can still read the 25 Character Product Activation key on your Windows COA label ( 5 blocks of 5 alpha/numeric sets ).
An example of a COA Label can be seen Here.
You can create a Windows 7 installation disc yourself using another PC - just download the correct Disc Image ( this must be the same version that originally came with your notebook - this is listed as Windows 7 Home Premium ) from the link below and use an application such as ImgBurn to burn the ISO correctly to a blank DVD - a guide on using ImgBurn to write an ISO to a disc is Here. These Images are clean and from a well-respected source - Digital River.
Windows 7 Images.
Use the disc to perform the installation, enter the Windows activation key found on the COA Label when requested and when the installation has completed, use the 'Phone Method' detailed in the link below to activate the OS - this method supported by Microsoft and is popular with people who just want a clean installation of Windows 7 without the additional software load normally bundled with OEM installations.
http://www.kodyaz.com/articles/how-to-activate-windows-7-by-phone.aspx
Any additional drivers and software you may need can be found Here.
Regards,
DP-K
****Click the White thumb to say thanks****
****Please mark Accept As Solution if it solves your problem****
****I don't work for HP****
Microsoft MVP - Windows Experience

Crazy purple pixels cant tell if hardware or software.

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